From injured to treating athlete injuries, and more
If you live in Vancouver and are vegan, you most likely know Dr. Matthew Nagra of Tonume Integrated Health. Not only is he one of Vancouver’s (maybe the only?) vegan doctors, but he’s spoken at most plant-based events around town.
On top of being a medical doctor, he’s got to be one of the most emotionally intelligent vegans I know, as he gets TONS of hateful comments spouting mis/disinformation about health and a plant-based diet. You might have even seen him debate a few carnivore doctors online with scientific evidence for as long as 2.5 hours. (FYI – anecdotes don’t belong in a scientific debate.)
This interview took place at the end of 2020, but there’s still a ton to learn from Dr. Nagra’s personal story and how he uses his medical practice to benefit not just his patients, but animal rights.
Justin Manning: All right, Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of VEG Networking, where vegan/plant-based entrepreneurs are connecting and collaborating to create an impact. Our special guest today is a doctor of naturopathic medicine. It all started for him in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, where as a youngster, he battled with asthma, allergies, and weight management. Into his adulthood, he received his Bachelor of Science in microbiology at the University of Victoria, subsequently graduating from the Boucher Institute, holding additional board certifications in intravenous therapies, prescriptive authority and acupuncture. He continues to help his clients through his plant based nutrition certificate from Cornell University.
Some other notable items about our special guest in rapid-fire: he does some work and major support with nutritionfacts.org, he supports animal sanctuaries and animal activism. He is a skilled footballer. For some of you, you might be thinking, yes, soccer! He is a rock and roll concert buddy with his father. He is a skateboarder, surfer, and flyboarder. Ladies and gentlemen, help us welcome Dr. Matthew Nagra.
Matthew Nagra: Thank you. It’s actually funny that you mentioned skateboarding. It’s been a very, very, very long time for that stuff. Brings back the memories for sure.
JM: Yeah. So, you know, speaking of skateboarding being a long time ago, we understand there was a skateboarding accident; it was a knee injury for you.
MN: Ankle, actually.
JM: Oh, okay, so an ankle injury—which kind of dovetails into our story. The first question is,
What is your plant-based/vegan origin story? And when did that start?
MN: When I was younger, you already mentioned some of the health issues I had—I had a personal trainer. I played a lot of sports as a kid. I had a personal trainer who was training me for football, actually, and I never really took his advice too seriously when it came to nutrition, but he did promote more plant based eating, maybe not 100% but 90–95%.
It wasn’t until he made me do a food diary, so to record everything I was eating for about two weeks. I knew that my diet wasn’t quite up to snuff, and it was far from what he wanted to see. And so I thought, okay, for these next couple weeks, I’ll just change my diet. Essentially, I’ll eat super clean. I got rid of the dairy; I got rid of all the classic junk foods, pop, soda, that kind of stuff.
And I started losing weight within a couple weeks, my skin cleared up, my asthma got better. I noticed all these improvements, and at that point I thought, okay, maybe he’s on to something. Now, the funny thing was, dairy was one of the first things I gave up, and it was a week later, or maybe two weeks later, that I broke my leg from skateboarding. And so everyone thought, all my friends are bashing me because I gave up dairy. Then this happens as if it had an impact.
But anyways, over that summer and the following couple years, I felt way better than I had previously, and I kept learning more and more about plant-based eating and experimenting in different ways. And then I went to university, at which point my health maybe slid a little bit in the other way. I was drinking on the weekends. I was eating cafeteria food. I was back to eating more meat and animal products. I still was dairy-free. I kept that out. I just realized I was feeling more tired and sick than I was previously. So I decided in my second semester, one day when I was feeling particularly rundown, that I would go all in 100%. I made the switch overnight, and it’ll be 10 years in a couple months here.
JM: Wow. So you have a lot of experience of going through things yourself that I’m sure you know, we’ll get to in talking about your practice, but you have quite an ability to understand what some of your clients might be coming to you with, right? Like the guilt of slipping up or an injury, or all these different things about how you can help your clients. And it’s fabulous. I guess the second half of that first part of the question is:
Throughout your origin story of becoming plant-based, was there a time when more of the vegan aspect of it came in and led you to what you do with sanctuaries and your animal activism and that side of it?
MN: That came after I’d gone 100%. So the initial change was health-driven, and then within a couple years of going 100% plant-based, was when I actually watched Earthlings. That was the thing I finally watched. The same personal trainer actually recommended it to me, funny enough. So he really drove a lot of those changes. And so I watched at that point.
And even after seeing it, surprisingly, I wasn’t 100% focused on ethics, and yet I thought it was like, wow, this is crazy, what we do to them, and that we need to consider it. But it wasn’t until I really started actually attending some more activism events and speaking with other people. I think it helps to have that kind of surrounding, have those people around you to reinforce these ideologies and these things that are happening. Because you know, you see it, it has a big impact, and then you forget about it. So it wasn’t until I got more involved in the community that I really started becoming passionate about the animal rights side.
JM: Well, all of us give you a big thank you for doing so because it matters. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say, is there a shout out you want to give to this personal trainer?
MN: Oh, great deal. Yeah, him and his wife, Wanetta Beal. Actually, she ran three Iron Mans in three days while being 100% plant based. She’s a crazy, super good athlete. So Grai Beal and Wanetta Beal. They have a personal training gym. Actually, it’s all dedicated to personal training just outside of Qualicum Beach.
JM: Beautiful Vancouver Island. Love it. Okay, so the second question is: what’s your entrepreneurial origin story? I think you’re the only doctor on the call, and that requires a lot of education, and we can get stuck in that education and then not do anything with it, so,
What was the spark for you to start building yourself out as an entrepreneur?
MN: See, as someone who’s in healthcare, my focus was always on health, it was always on patient health and I didn’t have that huge focus on the business side. But I grew up with business owners. My parents own multiple furniture and mattress stores, so I’ve been exposed to it a lot. It was something that came more naturally to me, or something that I just had experience with. I still don’t focus on it. I’m not thinking when I’m deciding if I’m going to implement a certain treatment to start promoting. I’m not thinking about whether it’s going to make me money. I’m thinking, is it going to help my patients?
On the more global scale, though, how do I bring patients in? I guess that’s where more of the entrepreneurship comes from. And I started with just social media, really. I started with social media once I was just out of school. I wasn’t even practicing yet. I started on it pretty quick. I started making posts about things that I thought were interesting, that I thought were informational things that people can learn from, but would also promote myself to put my name out there.
And funny enough, I didn’t think it would take off the way that it did, but I found something that I enjoyed doing, that I was good at, and people seemed to really like it. I had some really big names start to share some of my posts, and then people started reaching out and asking, “Are you accepting patients? How can I see you?” I still get questions from Russia and stuff sometimes, like people want me to do telemedicine across the world, which is funny.
It was something that kind of happened. I’m almost the wrong person to ask that question for. I just did something that I thought was really going to help people and that people would be interested in, and I happened to benefit from it. It wasn’t like I set out to think, okay how do I make my name as widespread and popular as possible?
JM: Matthew, I think all of us are nodding our heads, because I think you’re the perfect person to ask, because that lens of leading with value and doing it and understanding that progress is better than perfection, you might be the perfect person to ask. So thank you so much for that.
Probably safe to say that your physical brick and mortar clinic is not in operation right now?
MN: It is!
JM: Oh, excellent.
MN: We did shut down for a couple months, at which point I had to move online and started doing online telemedicine, but we are taking patients in person now. However, we have a whole bunch of protocols in place. We screen them ahead of time. They get their temperature taken. They have to wear masks. There’s all sorts of extra protocols that we have in place.
JM: Yeah, excellent. Okay, you’ve already hit on it, which is the virtual space in your industry, and I think I’ve heard you mention climate change as a trend before as well, but maybe specific to your industry and the whole of plant-based entrepreneurs.
What are some trends that you’re noticing, if any?
MN: I notice all of the opposite trends of what plant-based nutrition would be focused on. Whenever something new and flashy comes out, even things like the carnivore diet come out, people get interested all of a sudden. I see that in the health space so much. So if anything, I’m combating a lot of these trends that come out, and I try my best to clear up the confusion around them.
There’s also obviously trends that always happen with new, innovative therapies, and some of them can be great, but a lot of the time it’s based on preliminary data. You have some small scale trials that show some benefit for people, and that’s great, but we don’t want to be injecting people with something without having more large-scale research, not just a small trial on, say, 20 people or something. So I see these trends happen whenever something new in the health field, supplements, diet, whatever, comes up.
Whenever something’s new and exciting, people jump on it, but I actually tend to stay away from those. And if anything, try to warn people about getting ahead of themselves.
JM: Staying tried and true, outstanding. I’m very curious. I mean, everybody who comes to VEG Networking is interested in, of course, the alignment that we all share, right? And how do we actually support and connect and grow together. Through that lens,
Where is Matthew or your brand going in the future?
MN: Yeah, I guess with COVID and everything we’ve moved online, I see that happening. I do think there’s potential for me to expand into other provinces and do telemedicine that way. But I think where I’d like to see my overall brand, if you want to call it that, go, is I do want to still practice, I definitely want to be seeing patients doing that at least a few days a week. I would love to move into some way of educating people. Right now, I do it anyway, but I still need to be practicing. I don’t make money off of stuff that I’m educating people about. I’d like to do some kind of either online courses or something like that, where I can inform more people with hopefully good information but still practice as well as a part of what I do.
JM: Absolutely and I’ve said it to people that I’ve come across before, and I’ll say it to you because I think it fits, you could be crushing it on YouTube or something, where you’re absolutely right in terms of mass education and scaling your knowledge and information base, I think, spot on. And everybody here and everybody who’s listening will definitely be there to support you in that. Now, by virtue of you being a plant-based/vegan professional, clearly you’re already doing so much to support; with all of that being said,
Are there any sanctuaries or other charitable causes that are very important to you that you find yourself supporting year over year? Or maybe there were some new charities that you were supporting this year?
MN: You already talked about them. Nutritionfacts.org. I’ve been volunteering with them for a couple years now. I think they’re great. Dr. Greger there, he’s very dedicated to the cause. The guy is a workhorse. It’s actually crazy how productive he is. You know, it’s something to strive for, that’s for sure.
And so providing just evidence based nutrition information regularly. I fully support them. They’re taking donations for end of the year right now, I volunteer for the site answering questions. I’m always promoting their work.
The other one is The Happy Herd farm sanctuary, where I volunteer at every Sunday. And again, they’re just caring for animals who’ve been rescued from all sorts of different industries or homes that have been mistreated. Oftentimes, we get very sick animals that we have to nurse back to health. And then, unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out, but those are two of the charities that I’ve been most involved with personally.
JM: So wonderful to hear that you’re supporting a plant-based health site, and then the animals and the animal welfare, and as a result of your lifestyle, you’re supporting the environment. So you’re kind of like the Holy Trinity, the trifecta there, of your support. So once again, thank you so much for everything that you do. Because I know everybody here knows of nutritionfacts.org, and how amazing the work that they’re doing constantly.
All right. So I personally love this question because you never know when you’re going to get some golden nugget that you’ve never heard about, right?
In terms of books, podcasts or apps, is there anything that is maybe a little obscure that we wouldn’t know that has really helped Dr. Matthew Nagra get to where he is today?
MN: There are ones that I recommend to patients, I don’t know about for myself. For podcasts, I do love Plant Proof [now The Proof Podcast], and hopefully I’m not too clouded by bias now that I’ve been on it, but prior to that I loved it as well. I actually learned a lot more about the environmental side from that podcast. It’s not super often that he [Simon Hill] focuses on that. He’s more so health focused, but he is becoming more and more environmentally and ethically focused as well. And I actually listen to it for those topics. I don’t necessarily listen to it for the health topics as much anymore. So I really love that one.
For books, where I’ve learned a fair amount is probably from Brenda Davis‘s work. She’s a Canadian dietitian. She wrote the book Becoming Vegan, which is kind of the textbook of veganism, if you want to say, from a nutrition standpoint. I think that’s really great.
And apps, again, it’s not something that I necessarily use for myself that much anymore, but for people looking to broaden their nutrition or to get better in that sense, there’s the 21 Day Vegan Kickstart, which is something that I don’t think a lot of people know of. It’s a 21 day meal plan, mostly whole foods, plant-based. It’s really simple. It’s free.
And actually, for health professionals, the one that is really great from the same organization is PCRM’s Nutrition Guide for Clinicians. It is fantastic. I use that very regularly. Actually, that one lists all sorts of different conditions that people often come in for. Click on the condition. It pulls up all the background on the condition, how it’s diagnosed, how it’s conventionally treated, any nutrition interventions that may help, sometimes supplements that may help. It’s really good, and it’s free too, I believe, unless there’s a small charge now, but when I got it, it was free. That’s a really useful resource for any kind of health professional or anybody who’s just really interested in health.
JM: Thank you so much, and it’s lovely that these are recorded because we can go back and write down what your suggestions were and look deeper into those on our own. So thank you so much.
Now, whether these individuals or brands are your fellow practitioners around the corner or a mega conglomerate corporation across the globe,
Are there any other brands or entrepreneurs that you love to support?
MN: I feel like all of them, especially the Vancouver vegan scene. There’s To Die For [now To Live For] with Erin Ireland. There’s a bunch of you right here, like Shawna [Barker]. Whenever I’m in the area, I stop by; we chat. I don’t think there’s anyone, really. I love supporting all other Vancouver vegan properties or brands that I’m sure you’re all aware of at this point.
JM: Yeah, thank you. I know that keeping the mindset of local right now is so important, so thank you for bringing that up.
Now, the last question is prefaced, but you do this for a living, so it shouldn’t be too tough of a question for you.
Do you have any advice on the plant-based entrepreneur? More business sense of that?
MN: I’ll actually go back a little further. So when I was in school, in our professional development classes, we were always told to find our niche, as a professional myself, as a practitioner, I will see anybody who comes through the door, but to have my niche that I focus on.
And early on, I did like the idea of working with the plant-based population, specifically with chronic disease and in a specific age bracket, and I had all of these criteria listed out for who my ideal clients would be. But I had a huge focus on Physical Medicine. I love working with athlete’s injuries. I’ve been injured myself. I love doing that work, and so I actually tried to combine the two, and I wanted to focus on plant-based athletes. Largely now, as my name started getting out there and people started knowing what I do, I just got flooded with the whole Vancouver plant-based, BC plant-based population. I get so many clients through all of that, and that’s become my practice.
I still work with athletes. I still absolutely love working with athletes and vegan athletes, even better. But when I started getting this whole patient population, it was a lot broader than what I had initially set out for. And not actually exactly what I set out for.
It wasn’t really so much the injuries that I was dealing with. It was more so just the nutrition focus that became my practice. And I still love doing it. So if I had to give some kind of advice, I would say it’s good to know what kind of niche you’re targeting. And believe me, there is space for a plant-based niche, so many people want it nowadays, and more and more are going to go there. But it’s to be open. Maybe you aim for one thing, and you end up with another thing, just to be open to that kind of change and to various populations. You don’t need to shoot for the super specific little range of people.
JM: Fabulous advice, what we heard from that, was, yes, of course, have a focus, but be open to change. And I’m sure we’ve all seen that graphic before, where we think success is going from one line to here, but it’s all these scribbles in between. And we might get the result we wanted, but it doesn’t look or feel the way that we thought it would. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. So again, some wonderful advice and wise words at the end of our conversations.
We always leave it open to our special guests. If there’s anything that we weren’t able to address, whether it’s social issues, anything, we leave the floor with you to let us know.
MN: That’s really open-ended. I don’t know if I have too much else to add to that. I mean, I love what everyone’s doing here, and I think, yes, just to find what you’re passionate about and go for it. I don’t see any other piece of advice I could really give outside of that.
JM: Well, listen, it’s been a real pleasure to speak with you. We’re all so happy that we had some of your time, and if we’re so fortunate to maybe have a few minutes after we’re done our conversation here, and anybody who’s on with us today has a few questions for you. If we can get to those, that would be wonderful. But for those who are here and those who will be listening afterwards, you can reach Matthew on the web at drmatthewnagra.com and on Instagram @Dr.MatthewNagra. Thank you for being here.
MN: Thank you for having me.
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